" By keeping quiet, the narrator pretends to be white. She does not protest when her friend includes her in the white privileged clique. The phrase "quiet as kept" refers to the subordinate position of domestic slaves, who were not permitted to speak as equals with their masters. This eerie imagery is used to underscore the close connection between race and class in America. Whites are the dominant culture and the possessors of wealth and political power. Ivory soap is not just a symbolically white soap; the company itself is a white-owned company. Likewise, the narrator claims that she would lie about where her dress was from and even where her family lived. In fact, her dresses were made at home and she lived in a colorful "pink and green" house "along the tracks." In other words, she grew up a poor woman of color and it was her personal...
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